Yep, unit turned up and was fitted yesterday (with some most helpful advice from Monte!)
Mine is an Erisin 1019v and I ordered it through the Erisin ebay page. Paid £217 including postage from the UK warehouse meaning that I didn't have to pay import fees, plus if I do get any problems with it I only need to send it back to the UK, rather than Hong Kong...
Obviously it's only been a day but I'll try and review it as best I can!
First off it does look good and looks very OEM. No need for additional facia surrounds or anything like that, it was literally a straight swap. Only lead that wasn't included was a lead for the radio aerial so I need to buy one as currently have no radio signal at all. Wouldn't bother me to be honest but it's my wifes car and she wants radio (and obvioulsy she always gets what she wants!
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You can change the backlight of the buttons to match the dash which makes it look even more OEM, or alternatively you can change them to bright green or orange just to be different…
There are 10 fixed colours I think, then the option to gradient so you end up with a choice of loads! Or you can just set it to random and the colours will just change every few seconds.
User interface isn't the most smooth and intuitive compared to what most people are now used to (Android/IOS etc) and the touch screen itself takes a bit of getting used to. Compared to recent smart phones and Ipads etc, it's obviously nowhere near as responsive and you need to really emphasise the movements but at this money it was never going to be Ipad smooth! It's kind of like the early smart phones. Definitely usable though and probably better than I actually expected for this price.
Sound wise, it's decent but I'd actually say the unit it replaced had better basic sound from a CD. I still need to spend a bit of time tweaking the bass/treble/loudness controls to get something that I'm completely happy with but it'll do for now. Again, for the money it was never going to rival a Kenwood/Pioneer but it's about the quality I expected.
Ipod sound quality is pretty poor to be honest. I’m not sure if it’s to do with the lead itself or the actual connector on the back. It’s kind of like an s-audio cable into the back of the unit so doesn’t hold in with any security. You can wiggle the lead in the socket quite easily and I’m guessing that’s what is contributing to the poor sound. It’s not unlistenable (in fact my wife won’t even notice the difference!) but to me it’s pretty poor and I wouldn’t be able to listen to it day in day out.
Having said that, the menu to use the actual Ipod is nice and easy to use. Doesn’t display the artwork though, instead just lists the artists and stuff. Only thing I couldn’t seem to get it to do was to play all the albums consecutively by a certain artist, I could only play one album at a time. Need to have a bit more of a play around with this though as I’m sure it’s user error!
Now on to the main reasons I bought it and the main features that set it apart from any known brand for the price!
Sat nav is actually really good. Choice of 3d or 2d maps, with POI and the real time movements on the map are very good. The ebay shop even included IGo maps for all of Western Europe on a 4gb micro SD card as a free gift (I sent them a cheeky mail asking for this!) so literally it was ready to go straight away.
You can’t enter on postcode, only address or co-ordinates but to be fair though the address is intuitive and comes up with suggestions (so when I typed in M-A-I-D it gave me a choice of Maidstone, and the same for my actual road. Entered the first couple of letters then it completed the rest for me) so it’s very easy to use.
Definitely very impressed with the sat nav at the moment.
The other feature I bought it for was the Bluetooth, and again I’m massively impressed with it. Easily sync’d my Galaxy S3 to it and downloaded the phonebook and call history (a lot of the other Erisin’s don’t have the phonebook download feature so make sure you get one that does)
It has an internal mic so no need to route additional wires or anything like that and the call quality is really good at both ends of the line. You can search for contacts really easily and the system is very quick to dial and stuff. Definitely really impressed with this.
There’s lots of features that I still haven’t had chance to use yet, such as aux/usb in, changing the background picture from one on my sd card and watching a DVD. There are also a couple of features that I won’t be using. It has internet capability but only with the addition of a WiFi or 3g adaptor which I couldn’t see the point of, plus it also has a TV tuner built in. Obviously though the UK has ceased to broadcast in analogue so this won’t work at all! There was a 1029v model which was identical only had a digital tv tuner built in but again I couldn’t see when we would realistically use that and decided not to spend the extra £20 odd quid for that model.
Oh and one other thing that I don’t seem to be able to turn off is the fact that every time I stick the car in reverse, the screen changes to a reversing camera option. I don’t have a reversing camera fitted so it means that the screen just goes blank and silences the music and sat nav! Again, I’m hoping that this is just user error on my part!
Overall I’m definitely impressed and happy with the purchase. The Bluetooth and Sat Nav are excellent and for the money, really do make this unit a bargain. Yep, I’ve sacrificed a little bit of actual sound quality but I’m more than happy with this trade off, given how good the Bluetooth and Sat Nav are.
Obviously another huge question will be around the reliability and I’ll just have to see how this goes.
I’ll try and add some photos up later as don’t seem to be able to do it from my work laptop...
If you have any other questions, just let me know!
